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21 May 2013

Supreme Court Judgement Failed to marry after having sex with girl No Rape CrimeIn a historical judgement, Supreme Court of India said that if a man has consensual sex with a woman with the intention to marry her, then it cannot be termed as rape, even though the marriage does not take place.

A lower court in Haryana had convicted the accused to undergo seven years imprisonment, which was upheld by the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

In this case, Supreme Court said that at that time the girl was 19 years old and had adequate intelligence and maturity to understand the significance and morality associated with the act she was consenting to.

"She was conscious of the fact that her marriage may not take place owing to various considerations, including the caste factor.

Hence it could not be said that she had not given her consent for having sex with the accused,"

The Supreme Court acquitted the person who had served three years out of the seven year sentence and ordered his release.

A vacation Bench of Justices B.S. Chauhan and Dipak Misra said: “Consent may be express or implied, coerced or misguided, obtained willingly or through deceit. Consent is an act of reason, accompanied by deliberation, the mind weighing, as in a balance, the good and evil on each side. There is a clear distinction between rape and consensual sex and in a case like this, the court must very carefully examine whether the accused had actually wanted to marry the victim, or had mala fide motives, and had made a false promise only to satisfy his lust, as the latter falls within the ambit of cheating or deception. There is a distinction between the mere breach of a promise, and not fulfilling a false promise.”

The Bench said there must be adequate evidence to show that at the relevant time, i.e. at the initial stage itself, the accused had no intention whatsoever of keeping his promise to marry the victim.

There may, of course, be circumstances, when a person having the best of intentions was unable to marry the victim owing to various unavoidable circumstances.

The “failure to keep a promise made with respect to a future uncertain date, due to reasons that are not very clear from the evidence available, does not always amount to misconception of fact.

In order to come within the meaning of the term misconception of fact, the fact must have an immediate relevance.”